


What Happens Next

by enchantedsleeper



Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), References to Character Death, Spider-Man Identity Reveal, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 20:19:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18611794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enchantedsleeper/pseuds/enchantedsleeper
Summary: Peter gets a call from MJ a few days before the funeral.





	What Happens Next

**Author's Note:**

> So... behold my attempt to process my immense amount of Feelings about Avengers: Endgame by writing angsty fic. This is probably the heaviest thing I've yet written, though because I'm me, it's still sprinkled with fluff and ultimately hopeful. Needless to say, there are major spoilers ahead if you haven't seen Endgame yet.
> 
> Feel free to vent your feelings (especially Irondad and Spider-son feelings) all over the comments, and if you need me, I'll be over here burying myself in happy, cute, pre-Infinity War MCU fics.

Peter and May stay over at Pepper and Tony’s house a few days before the funeral.

“Of course we have a room for you here,” Pepper says with a faint smile as she shows Peter and May to their guest bedrooms, across the hall from one another. “I think that Tony even-”

She falters, and looks at Peter as if she isn’t sure whether she should continue, but then something in her gaze resolves, and she finishes, “I think that he even kept some of your stuff in here.”

After Pepper has left, and May has reassured Peter that she’ll be right across the hall if he needs her, Peter looks around the neat little bedroom. It honestly does look a little bit like his old room in May’s house; the same colour wallpaper, same type of furnishings. Just cleaner. He thinks about Tony decorating a guest bedroom in his house for Peter to stay in, in the hopes that one day, he might… Peter’s jaw clenches convulsively and he busies himself with rummaging in the closet, looking for the things that Tony had stashed away.

In the end, he doesn’t find them in the closet, but under the bed. Peter draws in a shaky breath as he lifts the lid on the small cardboard box. Inside are a few folded T-shirts with dumb science puns that he remembers leaving around Tony’s lab - one of them is bloodstained, from a kind of unfortunate incident where he’d tried to save a hijacked bus full of civilians and hadn’t had a chance to put on his suit. There’s a math textbook he thought he’d lost - he’d had to borrow a replacement copy from the school library. And, underneath everything, a cellphone.

Peter recognises this cellphone: it’s a Starkphone that Tony gave him right after his encounter with the Vulture. His old one got busted at some point during Homecoming night. “I’ve pretty much built armour onto this thing, so if you break it I’m gonna be pissed. And impressed,” Tony had told him at the time. He’d used it for the rest of the school year, until Tony had given him an upgrade over the summer. He assumed Tony had thrown away the old one, or taken it apart for components.

Peter picks up the phone and weighs it in the palm of his hand. It’s slightly warm. He almost drops it when it suddenly begins to vibrate.

The screen lights up with “UNKNOWN NUMBER”, and Peter peers at it, wondering who could have his old cell number after all this time.

The phone rings half a dozen times and then stops. Peter realises that whoever it was has left a voicemail. Hesitantly, he unlocks the cell phone, accesses his mailbox, and listens.

“Hey… loser. It’s MJ,” says a voice that he hasn’t heard in what feels like an eternity. There’s a pause, and then a sigh. “You know what, forget it. This was a stupid idea-” The message cuts off.

As Peter exits his voicemail, he notices that the light is flashing to signify that he has another message waiting. Someone else must have rung in those few seconds while he was listening to the message.

He plays the voicemail. It’s MJ again.

“I just realised that you probably don’t even use this number anymore, so, whatever.”

He recognises the diffident tone of voice she uses when she’s trying not to show that she cares about something.

Peter finds himself smiling. The expression feels odd on his face. He wonders if he should call MJ back, but looking around the room, he isn’t sure what he would say.

He decides to give it a few days.

* * *

Peter doesn’t think about calling MJ again until several days after Tony’s funeral. He and Aunt May are still staying at Tony’s house (it’s hard not to keep thinking of it as that), though Aunt May is making regular trips back to Queens while she tries to get their old apartment back in order. Like most people’s places, it was thoroughly looted during the five years after the Snap and needs a lot of fixing up. Pepper gently offered to help them buy a new apartment, a nicer one, and Aunt May promised that she’d think about it, but Peter knows she doesn’t like to accept handouts from anyone, even Pepper Potts. He likes their neighbourhood, anyway.

Peter spends a lot of time playing with Morgan. She’s a cute kid, and crazy smart. They play hide-and-seek, or tag in the yard, and Morgan peppers him with a million questions about science and the universe, and it’s great until one of them accidentally mentions her dad, and then they both get sad.

Peter tries to be strong for Morgan’s sake. She’s an amazingly tough little kid. He tells her some of the things he knew he wanted to hear after Uncle Ben died. He tells her that it’s not her fault.

He wishes he could believe the same thing.

One night, his gaze lands on the old cell phone on his night stand, and suddenly he really wants to hear MJ’s voice again. It’s still early, so he dials the number from his voicemails – he’s got it saved to his phone now under “MJ”.

MJ picks up almost immediately. “Peter.”

“Hey, MJ.” His voice sounds thready even to him. He clears his throat.

“What’s… up?” MJ asks him.

“Oh. I uh… I got your messages.”

“Oh. Right. Those.”

Peter wonders whether MJ would rather he hadn’t called her back, but he forges on. “So, uh, what did you want to talk about?”

“I…” MJ trails off, sounding uncertain for the first time that he can remember. “I just… wanted to talk.”

“Oh, okay. Sure.”

There’s a pause. “Not… over the phone,” MJ says. “Can you… Are you in New York right now?”

Peter thinks about Aunt May’s trips back to Queens. It wouldn’t be hard for him to ride along on the next one.

“I can be.”

* * *

Peter hasn’t been back to Queens since the day the aliens came to Earth, and he got beamed up in a spaceship trying to save a wizard. Five years ago. His brain still refuses to accept that it’s been _five years_.

Except that he knows Tony and Pepper didn’t have any kids before, and now they- now Pepper- has Morgan. It’s been a Morgan-lifetime.

Superficially, his neighbourhood looks mostly the same, just… hollowed out. It was shabby before, sure, but now it looks derelict. Uncared-for. Unlived-in.

Here and there, though, you can already see places where people have started to patch things up. Move back in to buildings. A lot of temporary stands selling things that used to be scarce before the Snap, like fresh fruit and vegetables, have been set up along the sidewalk.

Peter goes to see if Mr. Delmar’s bodega is still there. He isn’t sure what he’ll do if it’s gone. It had only just started to get back on its feet after his fight with the Vulture’s men in the bank across the street tore apart half the store. What if, after half of the world disappeared, Mr. Delmar stopped running it? Or… what if he disappeared too?

But it’s still there, exactly as he remembers it. Mr. Delmar is inside, leaning on the counter and looking gaunt. There’s more grey in his hair. Has it been five years for him? Five years of… emptiness?

Peter doesn’t go inside. He doesn’t think he could handle it right now.

He walks to the corner of 182nd Street and 73rd Avenue to wait for MJ. He’s only been standing there for a few minutes when he hears,

“Hey, loser.”

Peter turns and sees MJ, and it feels like the ground underneath his feet is really solid for the first time since he got to Queens. The tightness in his chest that has been there since Tony’s funeral – no, since the battlefield – loosens just a little bit. MJ looks exactly the same: the same thoughtful expression, same long hair swept back into a loose ponytail, with strands hanging in front of her face in a way that he always, secretly, thought was really pretty. He swallows hard.

“H-hey, MJ.”

She looks at him, assessing, but there’s something softer in her gaze that he doesn’t remember being there before. And something distant, an emptiness, that he recognises.

“Let’s go,” she says, turning away and beginning to lead the way down the street. “I’ve found a place a couple of blocks from here that still serves real coffee.”

* * *

Peter lets MJ order coffee for both of them; she gives him a withering look and knocks his hand away when he tries to pay for their orders. They sit down, and for a long while, just drink their coffee in silence. Once upon a time, Peter would have felt the urge to fill this silence with a nervous stream of consciousness, but lately, he’s found that the words just don’t come to him anymore.

MJ seems content to let the silence sit, but he realises that she’s studying him covertly over the rim of her cup and when she thinks he’s looking elsewhere. Is she worried about him? Maybe she wants to tell him something, but can’t figure out how to start. Okay, he should help her out by saying something.

“So…” Peter begins, and then realises there’s no easy way to open conversations any more. Even asking ‘How’ve you been?’ is a loaded question. So he decides to be direct. “What… happened to you?”

MJ presses her lips together, but she doesn’t look upset by the question, just sad. “As you can probably tell by the fact that I look exactly the same… I went away,” she says. “Got ‘dusted’, or… whatever it is they’re calling it. But my brother… He didn’t.”

“Oh god, MJ, I’m sorry,” says Peter. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t-”

MJ shakes her head, and Peter quickly shuts up to let her get whatever she wants to off her chest. “My mom, she disappeared too,” she says, her voice tight. “So it was just him… on his own, for five years.

“I think he might’ve made contact with our dad at some point, but he won’t talk about it,” MJ goes on, looking down at the dregs of coffee in her cup. “He won’t talk about any of it. And… neither of us knows what to say.”

Peter doesn’t know what to say, either. He senses that just saying he’s sorry again isn’t going to do any good. “I wish I could say something that would help,” he says eventually, his voice low. “That must be really tough.”

MJ wipes at one eye with the heel of her hand and looks up at Peter. He feels even more like she’s assessing him, like he’s being x-rayed. “What about you?” she asks.

Peter lets her change the subject, even though it’s kind of a dangerous subject to change to. “I, uh… yeah. I disappeared too,” he says.

He’s assaulted by memories of the red, bright sun on Titan; staggering forwards, clutching onto Tony’s arms. He forces them away; he won’t be able carry on if he doesn’t. “So uh, so did my aunt. I was on the field trip, and uh…”

He stops. He doesn’t have a convincing lie for the next part. Of all the things that Peter has been thinking about over the past several days, how to account for his disappearance from the school bus hasn’t been one of them.

“And you left,” MJ says evenly. “You climbed out of the window of the school bus. I watched you go.”

 _Crap._ Peter swallows. “There was a spaceship,” he says weakly. A spaceship that literally everyone else was paying attention to – except MJ.

“And you’re Spider-Man,” MJ says.

“I’m not-” Peter begins automatically, and then gives up. What’s the point? “How did you figure it out?”

MJ raises an eyebrow. “You’re not very good at hiding it,” she points out. “Sudden unexplained disappearances, flimsy cover stories, a mysterious ‘friendship’ with your alter ego – it’s like you looked in the superhero handbook.” Peter winces. “Not to mention that Spider-Man showed up outside of New York for the first time ever on the same day that we were all in DC. To rescue a bunch of school kids. Who just so happened to be our Decathlon team.”

Peter sighs. Honestly, by this point he’ll be lucky if MJ is the only one who’s figured it out. “Right.”

“But I still didn’t know for sure until I saw you climb out the window of that bus.”

Peter fiddles with the spoon resting on his saucer. “So, is that why you wanted to meet up? To tell me that… you know?” he asks.

MJ looks hesitant, which is an odd expression to see on her face. “I kind of called you on impulse,” she admits, looking down again and wrapping her hands around her coffee cup, even though it’s empty and must have gone cold by now. “It’s too quiet at home. Ben won’t talk, and mom’s kind of in shock about everything… I wanted to talk to someone.”

Peter nods, though he’s still kind of surprised that MJ picked him, of all people, to call.

“And I guess I wanted to… make sure you were okay,” MJ says, her voice even quieter now. “I saw in the news… about Tony Stark. Iron Man.”

Oh. Peter swallows, his throat suddenly dry. “Yeah.”

“You… knew him, didn’t you?” MJ asks softly. Peter sucks in a breath, and it’s hard – his chest is too tight. It hurts. The coffee shop suddenly feels too small, like the air around him is pressing in on him. The lights are too bright. The red sun on Titan- Tony’s face, burned on the battlefield, his eyes staring at nothing-

Peter hears something clatter and realises it’s his chair, realises he’s pushed to his feet, hands flat on the table. His hands are shaking. “I need some air,” he tells MJ, his voice so thready it doesn’t even sound like his own. He stumbles towards the coffee shop entrance.

Outside, Peter doubles over and sucks in air, hands resting on his knees, blinking away tears from his eyes. He thinks about calling Aunt May, but he doesn’t want her to worry – she was concerned about him coming back to Queens in the first place. And he doesn’t want to abandon MJ. He just needs a minute.

Eventually, he manages to get his breathing under control and straightens up, looks at the skyline. He remembers a huge, ring-shaped spaceship looming above New York, people screaming and running away. Now the sky is just grey, and New York is quiet.

He hears the door open behind him, and soft footsteps approach. “Hey,” says MJ.

“MJ, I’m sorry, I-” Peter turns towards MJ, and is cut off by MJ putting her hand gently over his mouth. Peter’s eyes widen, and MJ quickly drops her hand.

“Don’t apologise,” she says, brushing her hair out of her face. “I should be the one saying sorry. I should’ve known better than to… yeah. I’m really sorry.”

Peter nods, and just breathes. “You uh, you want to take a walk?” he asks, gesturing to the streets around them.

“Sure.”

* * *

They walk around aimlessly. Peter realises that he could use his abilities if he wanted to in front of MJ, carry her up a wall on his back or swing them up to a discreet spot, but it’s too much to contemplate. He hasn’t put on the suit since the day of the battle, hasn’t really used his abilities at all. He thinks he’s scared of what he’ll remember. Or maybe what he’ll start to forget.

They do finally end up on a wall, but it’s a low one, running along the side of a municipal library. They manage, somehow, to find things to talk about that aren’t too painful for either of them – subjects at school they don’t miss, memories from first grade and middle school. Peter finds himself smiling and even laughing a little bit.

They watch the sun go down, and Peter gets a message from Aunt May asking if he’s ready to meet her yet. Weirdly, he’s reluctant to say goodbye to MJ.

Peter looks over and finds MJ staring into the distance, at where the sun has long disappeared behind the horizon. She looks as though she’s lost in thought.

“What do you think is going to happen next?” she asks, so quietly he isn’t even sure she’s talking to him.

“Next?” he asks her anyway.

MJ looks at him as if she hadn’t realised he could hear her. “I- don’t worry. I was just kind of thinking aloud, didn’t mean to…”

“I think we’ll carry on,” Peter says over her. MJ’s forehead crinkles.

“You really think that we can? After… everything that happened?”

“Yeah,” Peter says, sure of himself now. “Not just ‘cause we have to, but because it’s what we do.” He thinks about the other Avengers at Tony’s funeral – Rhodey, Sam, Clint. Most of them were just ordinary people who’d taken the chance to do what was right. He thinks about Morgan and her bright, hopeful face. “Because we’ve still got something to protect.”

MJ is watching him with a new expression on her face: soft, open, almost expectant. He jumps a little as she takes hold of his hand, threading her fingers through his.

“Yeah,” she says. “We have.”

**Author's Note:**

> Now I'm thinking about how Peter and Morgan would probably get on like a house on fire and am contemplating writing some cute sibling-ish fic with the two of them. Maybe in an alternate universe where Tony is still alive. Hmmm.... plot bunnies :)
> 
> Also, the bit about Peter's bloodstained shirt and the hijacked bus is a reference to the amazing fic [Repeat After Me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11734389) by battybatzgirl, one of my all-time favourite Irondad fics. In reality I think Tony would have burned that shirt rather than keep it, but it was a nod that I couldn't resist making ;D


End file.
